Author Topic: The electoral college, and the NPV Interstate Compact  (Read 1411 times)

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Offline segnosaur

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There are a few reasons why we still have an electoral college, why it is still useful.

It omits the need for a runoff election.
That is neither a good nor bad thing, as there are advantages and disadvantages to it. Other countries manage to survive run-off elections, I'm sure the U.S. could survive.

Even if you wanted to avoid run-off elections, there are ways to avoid them even if an agreement/compact is created. (E.g. select the winner of the popular vote if there is a clear difference between candidates, otherwise resort to whatever mechanism the electorial collage would have used.)

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It provides at least some minimal protection for the smallest states against the largest ones.
Smaller states are already protected through the senate (where each state gets equal representation regardless of population.) Giving them an advantage in both the Senate and the presidental elections may seem like a little overkill to some.

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It prevents a clash between Cities and Rural areas. Relating to point #2, if we had a nationwide popular vote to decide the presidency, the rural areas would be hideously outvoted.
But that clash still exists under the current electoral college. But instead of the small number of rural residents complaining "We're being outvoted!" you have a large number of urban residents complaining "Why is the majority being subject to the whims of the minority, given the fact that the minority is working to take away our rights?"

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Democratic, yes, but not fair at all, considering those rural areas contribute a lot to the economy, particular in FOOD.
Food is something that they get paid for.

And lets face it, while someone like Trump may talk about how he is standing up for the farmers, the fact is the legislative agenda is still geared towards benefiting the wealthy. (And many of those rural residents have been negatively affected by tariffs that Stubby McBonespurs enacted.
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The United States is a federation, not a unitary state. If we had a less federal nature ("Less federal" meaning more centralization) to our Union, a direct national popular vote would be more appropriate. Countries in the western hemisphere that use a nationwide popular vote have stronger central governments than the USA.
That doesn't sound like an advantage OR a disadvantage....

Many other democracies in the world function quite well with stronger central governments.  If the electoral college is eliminated, the balance of power may shift slightly, but people in the U.S. will still have their jobs, they will still live in relative peace and have a higher standard of living than most other nations in the world. And individual states will still maintain a significant amount of independence.

And now the disadvantages of the Electoral college:

- As I pointed out before, it gives excessive political power to people based on nothing more than where they live. (So much for the concept that "all men are created equal".... now its "some men are created equal, but the ones that live in cowpatch, Montana are more important than those that live elsewhere")

- It reduces voter turnout. How many people in California or New York sat out the 2016 election because they figured "No need to vote... Clinton will win our state anyways". If the president were selected by popular vote, people might be more motivated to actually go to the polls

- It encourages politicians to concentrate on only a small number of 'swing states'. If you look at the last election, neither candidate visited states like Texas, California, Oregon, Washington, etc. Yet both candidates made a lot of stops in Florida. If the presidency were decided by popular vote (either through the voting compact or by eliminating the EC altogether) then candidates may be obliged to spend more time in other states instead of just assuming "I'll win the whole state anyways".

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-last-10-weeks-of-2016-campaign-stops-in-one-handy-gif/
« Last Edit: April 29, 2019, 12:54:12 pm by segnosaur »